A surge for Huckabee

On the eve of the 2008 Republican presidential primary season, polls this week showed a surge of support for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. In Iowa, which holds its caucuses on Jan. 3, Huckabee opened up a double-digit lead in some polls over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Though Huckabee remains well behind Romney in New Hampshire, in national polls he shot from fifth place to second.

With Huckabee’s support coming largely from evangelical Christians, his rivals are raising questions about his conservative bona fides and battling over Iowa’s and New Hampshire’s independents. Romney, once the clear Iowa front-runner, unveiled commercials questioning Huckabee’s record on crime and illegal immigrants. John McCain, still trailing in the polls, this week picked up the endorsement of Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman along with endorsements from three influential newspapers.

Lost in all the hubbub over Huckabee’s rise, said Rich Lowry in National Review, is Rudy Giuliani’s “slow downward slide.” Giuliani, who’s not campaigning in Iowa, has canceled most of his advertising in New Hampshire, effectively ceding that state to Romney. He’s now counting on a win in Florida on Jan. 29. But after a steady drumbeat of stories about his use of a publicly financed security detail for his mistress while he was New York’s mayor, national polls show Giuliani’s support slipping to 22 percent, from a high of 38 percent. He’s in real trouble.

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Take all these polls with a large grain of salt, said Carl Leubsdorf in The Dallas Morning News. In Iowa, Huckabee seems to have the momentum, but “Romney has a far more substantial organization.” That gives him an edge in the notoriously complicated caucus process, which requires guiding voters through meetings that last hours. And until the early states actually vote, national polls are even more meaningless. Check back in February “and we’ll be able to figure out who’s really winning.”

There is one meaningful statistic in these surveys, said Adam Nagourney in The New York Times: None of the Republicans, including Huckabee, is viewed favorably “by even half of Republican voters.” With each candidate seemingly “hobbled by some failing of character, ideology, or record,” Republicans are rightly worried that the “tepid rank-and-file reception to the best the party has to offer” could spell disaster come November.